First of all, I don’t understand it. It goes totally against all standards of wild behavior, after all. Dogs who gave away their positions on the Savannah way back when simply didn’t make their mark in evolution….at least not in a way I covet.

Second of all, if one is targeting a flea in a difficult area of one’s flank, even a small sneeze will throw it off the trail.

What IS the reasoning behind this convulsion? To clean the nose? To scare the daylights out of the hegemony? To blow the fluff from the corner of my dog-dish?

All valid but none, necessary.

I fear the act may be going the way of Darwin: phased out over time as runny nosed dogs simply don’t survive.

Solution: give the sneeze true purpose. Use it as an emotion, any emotion. Make it cute, like one’s presence at the dinner table, wide-eyed and ears perked at the possibility of a crumb.

The fossilized skull of a rat the size of a car has been found in Uruguay. It’s about 4 million years old and weighed about a ton, so big, in fact, that it probably spent most of it’s life submerged in water: a giant Hippo with a long tail and pointy nose.

They nicknamed it Mighty Mouse.

Apparently, the largest living rodent now is Capybaras at 60 kg fully grown…now, that’s a meal.

The squirrels are out in full force up in the Pincio. There’s nary a nut to be found now. They’re all squirreled away, if you will.

I sit and watch the dizzying creatures, mostly. Chasing them is fun, but it becomes tiresome after a while. Squirrel, tree, squirrel, tree, squirrel, tree.

So, I muse of other ways to use this rodent. Below is one of my favorites. It’s design reminds me somewhat of a machine Leonardo might have developed had he simply switched his obsession from flying a human

to flying a squirrel:

Then there’s the commercial amusement of providing the squirrel with a different take on an e-ticket Disney ride:

The Roman exodus that began August 1 is yet in full swing. The streets are oddly quiet; the heat is turned to high and, up on the Pincio, the vendors of small squeaky playthings have even closed up shop until the cooler days on late September.

Thunderstorms roll across the city like thick blankets from time to time. The air becomes 99% water and it’s hard to breathe, especially at ankle level where the rain hits the hot cobblestones and steam rises like fog.

So, I am content (I guess) to stay in the air conditioned appartamento. I roll the ball around a bit until it ends up under the low slung couch. I check the dirty laundry by the washer for my Contessa’s underthings. My nose searches out an empty breakfast bowl. Finally, I turn to the computer and use one particularly long toenail to search “cute dogs”. Eccolo!

I go to “the gallery” and click: Up comes Axel!

Axel

My old pal from across the hall stands in the snow, a fuzzy, green ball in his mouth, cutting quite a fine figure (though he’s put on a kilo at least since we last ran on the Pincio together.)

Seems he’s trying to win a contest for cutest dog (I’m afraid I have that title…alas, I am not entered). Grand prize will pay for his trip back to Rome. He says he misses pizza…real pizza. And Rome has just the spot for that.

So, if you care about a small dog and his pizza (not to mention the fact that if he makes it back to Rome I will have something to do other than modifying my Contessa’s silky things…),

VOTE FOR AXEL by clicking the cute dog link above. Send the link to your doggish friends. You can all vote once a day. Let’s send Axel to Rome.